


Customary

by Sixthlight



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Christmas Party, Gen, Peter/Nightingale if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 09:23:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3405479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So what are <i>you</i>, Inspector Nightingale?" said Mrs. Grant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Customary

**Author's Note:**

> I really wish we had a name for Peter’s mother (and, seriously, _why don’t we_?) but we don’t. So although my inner feminist is staging less a rebellion and more a full-scale revolution, Mrs. Grant it is until we get one.

Thomas had met Peter’s mother occasionally over the years – at the Spring Court, once or twice when Peter had landed himself in hospital again, that sort of thing – but he’d never felt the full weight of her attention until now, after finally accepting Peter’s repeated invitations to his family’s Christmas dinner. It had been a chaotic but welcoming affair; Peter was an only child, but he had a mob of cousins. Which term applied, so far as Thomas could tell, to practically any family member whose relationship to Peter was more complicated than parent, uncle, or aunt. He did his best to keep up with the names, but sadly, in social situations you couldn’t just write them all down in your notebook.

“All this takes a bit of getting used to,” Peter’s father had said to him at one point.

“Oh, I’ve had a lot of family Christmases like this, when – when I was younger,” Thomas had replied. He wasn’t quite sure what Peter had told his parents about him. Or what they might have believed of it. Or what they thought about Peter inviting him for Christmas, come to that.

“Not _exactly_ like this, I’d bet.” Peter’s father had gestured around. They weren’t the only white people in the room, but it was a near thing.

“Not in the detail,” Thomas had allowed, “but in the substance.” The comfortable clamor of people who weren’t often all in the same place and making up for lost time; that was quite familiar.

“That would have been before the war?” Peter’s father said, with an air of testing, and Thomas merely replied “Yes, it was.”

It turned out Peter’s father was interested in Thomas’s reminiscences of jazz concerts he’d attended – particularly during his one visit to Harlem, in the twenties – and Thomas was happy to reminisce, in this limited way. Outside the demi-monde, reminders of his actual age tended to make people suspicious or bemused, if they knew of it. Richard Grant really did just want to talk to someone who’d seen great music performed nearly a century ago, and wasn’t terribly bothered about why that was possible. It was quite refreshing, really.

So his original plan of bowing out gracefully after dinner itself had gone by the wayside somewhere, even when Peter ‘rescued’ him – Peter’s description, not his – from that particular conversation. It had all been going very well, really, better than he’d thought it might. He hadn’t had any extended conversation with Peter’s mother, though; not deliberately, just the way the flow of the party had gone.

Until she cornered him alone in the kitchen, where he’d gone to put his wineglass. He turned around, and there she was, arms folded.

“So,” said Mrs. Grant. “What are _you_ , Inspector Nightingale?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Peter brought that girl to Richard’s concert, and she was a witch, an evil witch, she hadn’t gotten any older,” she said. “Then Beverley, she was a nice girl, I’ll give her that, but she is an _orisa_. She told me so herself. And now – here you are. So what _are_ you?”

“I’m not – that is, Peter and I aren’t – I’m not quite sure what you’re asking,” Thomas managed, because the idea that Peter’s mother was putting him in the same category as Beverley Brook and, he could only presume, the ill-fated Simone Fitzwilliam, was very slightly terrifying. And raised again the question of just what Peter _had_ said to his parents about why he wanted to invite his senior officer to Christmas dinner.

“You know what I’m asking,” Mrs. Grant said. “What are you?”

And wasn’t that a question. Thomas wasn’t even sure he knew the answer himself. He wasn’t sure anybody did.

“I’m a wizard,” he said finally. It was as a good a word as any. “Like Peter.” Perhaps the first time that comparison had been made in that direction.

This seemed to satisfy her. “As long as you’re not a witch.”

Thomas wondered what the difference was; it seemed to be important to her, and not related to gender. But her expression said he’d answered correctly, so he supposed it didn’t matter right this second. He could ask Peter, later.

He must have relaxed visibly, because her eyes narrowed. “And don’t think I don’t know why he brought you here.”

He ran through the possible answers in his head. Because Peter was kind, and hadn’t wanted him to be on his own with Molly at Christmas, for yet another year; because Peter was his friend as well as his apprentice, in an odd and unlikely way. Neither sounded quite right. Even though they were perfectly true.

“Peter’s a good boy, and he hates the thought of me spending Christmas rattling around the Folly,” he said carefully, hoping it sounded sufficiently – distant. “And it’s very kind of you and your family to have me here.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. And smiled again, in a way Thomas couldn’t quite interpret or perhaps didn’t want to. “And you will be welcome next year, if you want to come.”

“Thank you,” said Thomas, because what else could you say to that, really?

She swept out of the room, and Peter came in.

“Oh, there you are,” he said. “What on earth did Mum want with you?”

“Nothing,” Thomas told him, too quickly. “Just, ah – asking how I was doing.”

Peter frowned, clearly not believing him, but let it drop. “Come on. Time for the _Doctor Who_ Christmas special – mandatory viewing, house rules. You might even like it.”

“Well, if it’s customary, I suppose I must,” Thomas said – though he could easily have made his excuses at that point, he realized once the words were out. Peter beamed at him like he’d gotten a compliment. Thomas couldn’t help but smile back.

 _Don’t think I don’t know why he brought you here_ , said Peter’s mother, in his head; and Thomas, for the first time, let himself wonder. 

 

 

 


End file.
